Le tout Paris is talking about it. Everywhere in Paris this week, we hear the voices of horror and astonishment and, now, pride. 2 million in Paris, 3 million throughout France; an Italian newspaper runs the headline, an Oceano Pacifico. A day of national unity in which everyone, whatever their other identities, was French: “We are all Charlie Hebdo. We are all Police. We are all Jews. We are all Free.” It was a magnificent show of solidarity; a collective reassertion of the social contract. It brought out all the best kinds of things that France is made of, that has made her a symbol of liberty and courage so great that even people who find the French, well, difficult, are nonetheless Francophiles. A news anchor notes, “Yesterday, Paris was, bel et bien, the capital of the world.” Or in the words of President Hollande, “la France est toujours le point du rassemblement du monde quand la liberté est en jeu” (France is still the place where the world gathers when liberty is at stake).

And what brought France, capital of the world, together in this show of unity? Saying no to the incredible — some say senseless — slaying of 12 cartoonists. A massive and emphatic statement of refus — refusal to “bend the knee,” to “be silent,” to tolerate the violence of the sword against the pen, to endure this assault on France’s core values in silence. In the words of the martyr in chief, “Charb,” taken up as the manif’s motto: “Better to die standing than live on one’s knees.”

All around one hears shock, astonishment. “Mais, where does this madness come from?” How could this happen in France?!?Draped across the grand monument, Place de la République: POURQUOI?

But some of us, however moved by the events in Paris, find it difficult to take unalloyed pleasure in this wave of communal solidarity. For fifteen years now, there has been a consistent stream of powerful evidence for all the trends that now, in this latest jihadi assault, so rudely shocked all of France:

Holocaust Guilt vs. Holocaust Shame: On the Crisis of Western Civilization This is a longer version of what appeared in the Tablet. Richard Landes, Jerusalem @richard_landes [email protected]Read More »